If there were a pill for the grey I might honestly consider it... I wouldn't care if the happiness were artificial. If they made happy pills to erase the memory of fear, I would take them and face death with a smile. If they made a treatment for the grey, I would never need reality again.

What is light without the shadows it casts?

It's funny how my understanding of object permanence tends to suffer.

the thawing out

the winter came just when we knew it would,
when the trees had been barren
for so long that they began to fade
into the endless skeletal grey that was everything
and it took the first shimmering frost
to remind us that they were still there and still growing
long after the fiery hues of autumn had cooled,
but now that winter is here
one begins to feel apathy toward the blues and whites as well

  every room is heated until the inside glows red
but this is not the red of the autumn leaves I longed for
and then forgot
but something entirely new,
artificial, one could say

  after the first snowfall the salt trucks made rounds,
their only remedy to lower the freezing point
of something already frozen
I still slip every time I walk home

  "this is a better winter than most," 
people tell me,
but the cold still hurts
the summer will come soon enough,
I remember,
and then I will miss the ability to sit quietly inside

  winter pushes us all into close quarters,
but I have nothing to say to these people who have nothing to think
and everything to believe
we’re a well matched pair, her and I,
each of us will always have the light on while the other is trying to sleep

  the chill has been dragging on for months
and at this point,
the pavement is white and it isn’t even from snow

but now
after five long sleepless nights 
I open my eyes and realize
the winter is finally thawing out

if I burn out today, I won't burn out tomorrow- right? right? is it possible to save all your breakdowns for the weekend?

On the day laid waste

I no longer require three large spoonfuls of sugar in my tea, and that is how I know I am growing up.

I had a rather bad day not too long ago. I had been rushing down a corridor on the eighth floor of a building, exhausted to the point where Reality bent, when it occurred to me that had only the plate-glass windows that lined the halls had latches, I could so easily jump and let that be that and perhaps it would be proper. The little ghosties in my head would not let me have my thoughts to myself so I shut them in with me and did not leave my room again for about another eight hours, at which point I realized that I had neither eaten nor spoken all day. It's quite simple to just let time pass, to curl up in your bedsheets and feel it ravage your mind. I have decided to take better care of myself, though. I will not let other people's voices become ghosties in my head, I will do what is best for myself without contemplating their disapproval.

I have realized that it is better to expend the physical energy to leave a draining situation than to exhaust half of my mental energy to sit paralysed and shut everything out. This experiment in loyalty must have those bounds at least.

Good night.

"If you haven't done anything wrong, you wouldn't be afraid of the cops and you wouldn't run/fight/resist."

Alright then. Think back to elementary school. You are sitting in your red plastic chair, reading your SSR book when the principal walks in. "(Your name), follow me to my office," he says in a booming, authoritative voice. Your head spins. You always do your homework, you never copy anyone else's answers, you sit still and listen, and you don't take other people's things. "I didn't do anything wrong!" you think, but then you second guess yourself. Maybe you forgot one of the rules. Maybe there was a new rule that no one told you about. Maybe the principal could read your mind and knew that you said naughty words in there! The entire class stares silently as you walk out. You are now convinced that you've committed a million different infractions and scared out of your mind.

The principal stops in the middle of the hallway to chat with a teacher. He is turned away from you for a full thirty seconds. If you were to run, you would be out the door in ten or fewer. You are eight years old and terrified. What would you do? 

If you were a more level-headed child, as I doubt many of us were, you might have realized that the principal might be pulling you out because you've done something good.

Police rarely stop anyone to point out how well-behaved they are.

You are fifteen, walking to a convenience store after dark because your parents aren't home yet and you really want some Fritos. All your lawnmowing money is in one pocket of your black hoodie, and you're walking fast because there have been muggings recently and you're a bit on edge. You aren't paying much attention to your surroundings. Suddenly, a police officer hustles around a corner and directly into your path. You are startled. You try to move past him, but he orders you to stop. Your head spins again. Your father told you once that the police were useless in your town. They didn't care who was guilty or innocent, everyone was a criminal in their eyes. He said that the best thing to do was to stay out of trouble and never give them a reason to notice you. Whether or not that's true, you are afraid. You don't use drugs, shoplift, get into fights, or drive unlicensed. You wonder if the cop could have somehow found out about the beer you sneaked at your friend's house last weekend. Or maybe he knew that you knew your older brother smoked pot on Friday nights and didn't turn him in. But you are a bit more rational now, and you realize the cop has no reason to hold you- but he could find one if you stick around. While running through potential reasons, you have missed the officer's instructions. When you take off, the only thing in your head is pure fear. However, while running through possibilities in your head you have missed the officer's instructions, and he now has reason to hold you.

Fear is a basic human reaction, and it occurs even when there is no rational reason to be afraid- more so when one has been taught to be afraid, whether or not that fear is warranted in reality. When people are afraid, they distort and misjudge situations and even surrender to the fight-or-flight instinct. This is a basic fact of human nature. Instinct works first, conscience works later. Reasoning and higher order thinking are severely compromised when a person is afraid.

Furthermore, if it is reasonable for a highly trained and experienced cop like Darren Wilson to become so irrational under fear that he sent six bullets into an unarmed man, then how can we expect the average citizen of a protesting community, raised to distrust and fear the police and entirely unaccustomed to high-risk situations, to hold on to their rationality when approached by police? Resisting arrest is a crime, but is in no way a sign of an unclean conscience.

(tumblr repost)

Writer's block.

After an exciting evening of bright lights and loud applause, I sought to relax the only way I know anymore - the TV blaring, every light on, holding four conversations at once. Turn everything on and shut it out.

Mindless, totally mindless. I open a window and close it again. I will not change tabs until something is written.

Make sense of the static. We treat increasingly more stimulating things as background noise for our indolence. How, then, are we to learn to turn our minds off?

Here in the silence, every idea that had formed melts away like frost on a sunny day.

You cannot pull poetry out of a void, it comes from the world and into you. Every image and analogy already exists somewhere in the aether. Your job is only to channel and transcribe it.

I think there might be some ideas somewhere, pushing against the boulders I haven't figured out how to move yet. I can see their spindly black legs poking out from the cracks. They haven't the room to fly. Perhaps if I seek to begin something else they will find their way out.

Check your privilege?

You are lucky if you can study for psychology without being triggered by a clinical description in your textbook.

If you don't see parts of yourself in every diagnosis.

If you can memorize the diagnostic criteria for depression any other way than by checking off the symptom list.

If you have the luxury of having to speculate what it might be like to be suicidal.

If you are able to say, "Maybe they should just get over themselves."

You are immensely lucky if you can sing along to twenty one pilots without feeling as if your soul is fracturing because of their honesty.

If you have never saved a song or a quote or a text from someone special, thinking, "This might save my life next time."

If you have never run off alone into the night, hearing the steps of all the ghosts chasing you that you still aren't and never will be rid of.

If you have never had to hide letter openers and X-Acto blades.

If you are able to live for the now and not worry about where you might be the next time things go wrong.

If you aren't afraid of cycles.

If you aren't afraid of yourself.

You are so unbelievably lucky if you have never been afraid of what might happen in the hours you aren't quite there.

Take care of yourself. You will turn out just fine.

not much worse than being alone with the world while it trembles and vacillates

right now it feels as though
every cell
in my body is crying out under the pressure
of unsaid words

in my place
screaming,
"just say it already"

well, it's not that simple

a weekend passed
then another
enough time to find that "perfect moment"
or maybe not
accumulated words crumble under pressure
metamorphose into leaden silence

at first I could see them
hovering
written out in empty space clear enough
to read from
like a script

now I know I'll never say them

all the right moments passed

the words kept weaving in and out
of each other
filling up the space
until it became a curtain of ink
unreadable
and unmeaningful

but every time I swear I'll say them

each word plucked from the mass
cutting through
the white fog between the world and me
revealing the cracks
and holes
and anything through which I may escape

perhaps this would be less painful
if only
the words spoke for themselves
without the need for
my mouth the interpreter

or if these were words you would ever
ask to hear

the faster something burns the more it resonates

I haven't properly socialized for an entire day and now I feel like I'll never want to again.

Well, fuck.

Depression sucks.

Wasted nights, nights so pointless they may as well not exist. Empty nights, devoid of anything but a persistent compressing feeling, compressing the silent hours into a single point that hums in the way compressed silence does. Endless nights, time compressing into nothing, still everything, existing outside itself even when it should have been destroyed. What would happen if in these moments, time were not to exist? Would the rest of time expand to fill in the empty space, or would there be a discontinuity? Would the empty space pull all the rest of time in like a black hole? Would the future still exist in the vacuum? I want this pointless night to not exist... 

(long story short, I want to leave my room and get some food but social anxiety sucks and for some reason there are still people out at 2 am)

People I know in real life have found me here.

Dare I remain?

Orientation week.

So much mindless socialization, I'm screaming inside. I made friends with a few other introverts and we've been bonding over our shared dislike for name games. We rarely have any time to ourselves before 10 PM and each hour seem to be placed in larger and larger groups. Tonight was Playfair, an icebreaker involving all 1,000+ members of the freshman class. Rowdy crowds, applause, confined spaces, static playing over the speakers, all sorts of things I don't do well with... I somehow avoided overload by focusing on a red light in the distance and trying to project my consciousness into it, but I can barely remember what happened around me from that point on. Crossing my fingers tomorrow won't be so chaotic.

Dear Auntie...

"My girlfriend and I (m) have been dating for over a year. She's great in every way, but there's one thing that's making me really frustrated.

We've been sleeping together for about a year. And she's great in bed, but I feel really unfulfilled sometimes. Whenever one of us wants to try something we'll talk about it, but there is one thing she won't try. See, I really want her to blow me, but she's uncomfortable with the idea. We haven't really discussed it even though we have great communication on everything else. The times I've asked why she doesn't want to blow me, she's given a vague answer about being uncomfortable with it or mentions a "mental wall."

And I don't want to be a dick and force her to do something, but this is a problem and it's affecting our relationship. I just don't feel excited about having sex with her. And if she weren't so reluctant about blowing me, that might change. I absolutely understand that she might be uncomfortable with the idea, but I just feel like there's something missing from our sex life. We've tried other exciting things and those are great, but I really want her to blow me. And every time I've asked her why she won't just do it she gives the same vague answers about mental walls and being uncomfortable and won't give a better explanation. What should I do? Do I just drop the subject and hope she feels more comfortable with this later on, or is there anything else I could do?"

------------------------------------------------------

In the interests of not creating a straw man argument, I'm not going to write a response to this hypothetical letter. But if I were going to, what should I say? Should I encourage the writer to wait and respect his girlfriend's boundaries regardless of when they might change, or should I propose an "anything else"? Would I be promoting rape culture if I suggested the latter? What would you think of someone who writes a letter like this in the first place? Are his girlfriend's boundaries and explanations reasonable? Does she owe him more? What does her "no" mean?

Now, what do you think about this?

http://community.sparknotes.com/2014/07/29/auntie-sparknotes-my-boyfriend-wont-do-certain-sexy-things

Has your opinion of the writer and the response changed in any way? Why?

Should it?

Reach for that light, we were told.

They gave us wings so we could. Then you went your way and I went mine.

My light was a small one, ten feet above the ground. It radiated heat all the way to where we had first emerged. It didn't take long for me to approach it, but I am not any closer than I was then. I have never been able to traverse the invisible barrier between me and that light. Every day its radiance grows brighter and every day I take in more. I can only beat my wings against the wall for so long. One day, I will break through and reach the light. This is all I live for.

I cannot see you anymore. You went after another light, a mysterious one impossibly far from where we were. It glowed so brightly at first and you were compelled. Every night after that it faded a bit more, became smaller and farther away... You never lost your obsession. Even when the light went out, you kept flying toward it. I could see you until that night. Now the light grows brighter, and I wonder where you are. Have you come any closer? Or has your light grown brighter because you haven't? I worry about you, about how far you'll have to fly only to hit a wall like I have. But that light is all you live for. Perhaps when you reach it it will envelop you like mine cannot.

Does anyone ever reach the light?



(background: my twisted mind is fascinated with those insects that throw themselves against the porch light til they drop dead. I once heard that moths are so attracted to light that they will keep flying toward the moon until they die, forgoing reproduction and every other purpose of their lives, and true or not this seems to have stuck with me for ten years)

I don't even know... Some things, I really don't understand... I couldn't even tell you what's confusing me so right now. Some intersection of Time and Change and Personality and Oblivion...

On summer.

I love the nights when the inside and the outside feel the same. Tonight, the outside could be nothing more than an extension of the inside; rather than different worlds, the outside and inside are only different rooms. Stars and recess lights are the same things, after all, and I could touch the indigo ceiling if I wanted to. The walls are still there, I am safe, no matter how infinite this house's borders may be...